The draft national frequency allocation plan 2011 of India (NFAP 2011) is one of the most important and arguable plan of India. Various government departments have their own interests and concerns that are preventing formulation of a NFAP of India.The responsibility to formulate the NFAP 2011 rests with the wireless planning and coordination wing (WPCW) department of telecommunications (DoT). WPCW had issued the draft NFAP 2011 in the third week of March upon which various inputs have been provided.
Various government departments and telecom operators have written to the DoT and expressed disagreement with the plan. DoT will send all these views to the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), which will come up with the final version of the NFAP 2011.
According to Praveen Dalal, managing partner of New Delhi based law firm Perry4Law and leading techno legal expert of India, the NFAP 2011 must be legally effective and technologically sound. Presently, issues like Encryption, VOIP, Satellite Phones, Spectrum Allocation, etc are not properly addressed by Indian Government, informs Dalal.
The NFAP 2011 would be an integral part of the national telecom policy of India hence it is essential that we must have a new and effective telecom policy for India. In fact, the national telecom policy of India 2011 has already been proposed and it may cover NFAP 2011 and allied matters as well.
Let us see how effective national telecom policy of India 2011 and NFAP 2011 would finally be.
